Bloomberg Línea — With more than 97% of the votes counted and with an irreversible trend declared, Bernardo Arévalo de León has won Guatemala’s presidential elections, and will lead the country for a four-year term following Sunday’s elections, in which he beat his closest rival, former first lady Sandra Torres.
The candidate of the so-called Seed Movement garnered more than 2.4 million votes (58.6%) against 1.5 million (36.5%) for Torres, National Unity of Hope (UNE) party, according to the preliminary electoral results transmission (TREP) of the country’s electoral authority, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE).
Some 9.3 million Guatemalans were eligible to vote on Sunday to elect the successor of right-wing president Alejandro Giammattei, of the Vamos party.
However, abstentionism in these Guatemalan elections was 55.1%, but which was lower than the 2019 runoff elections, when around around 58% of the electorate failed to vote.
President Giammattei tweeted his congratulations to Guatemalans for holding the elections “in peace, with few isolated incidents” and also to Arévalo de León, to whom he extended an invitation “to begin the orderly transition, the day after the results are made official”.
César Bernardo Arévalo de León, a 64-year-old academic, is the son of Juan José Arévalo Bermejo, who served as president between 1945 and 1951, and whose administration is seen as one of the most significant in the history of the Central American country.
“I am not my father,” Arévalo de León pointed out at the closing of his campaign. “But I walk the same path he paved, and we are going to walk it together as a people. I have the same yearning as he and the revolutionaries of 1944″, he told a crowd in Guatemala City’s Constitution Square.
The president-elect will take office on January 14, 2024.
Before becoming a politician, he was known as an academic dedicated to writing books and articles on civil-military relations and security.
“Viva Guatemala” Arévalo tweeted on Sunday night, with a photo of himself against a backdrop of the word ‘thank you’.
Arévalo also worked in diplomacy in the mid-1990s as Guatemalan ambassador to Spain and Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs in the government of former President Ramiro de León Carpio.
Likewise, during that period he served as consular secretary of Guatemala in Israel and also worked as conflict conciliator for various organizations in Asia and Africa.
Karin Herrera, Vice President-elect
His running mate, and who will be vice president, is Karin Herrera, a 55 year old chemist, biologist, university professor, environmentalist and sociologist.
The plenary of electoral magistrates held a press conference on Sunday evening to release data on the trend of the election results. The presiding magistrate, Irma Palencia, indicated that they already identified an important trend, “which you have been seeing, I do not need to announce it to you, but we are going to share”.
“The voice of the citizens spoke, elections are won or lost at the ballot box”.
“We cannot celebrate who is above or below the trend, what we can celebrate is that the process concludes successfully”, added the official. “Guatemala is the one that won, our flag is Guatemala and we are grateful to God, thank you very much”, she said.
Magistrate Blanca Alfaro made a call to the winning candidate “so that, with total responsibility, without any surprises, we begin a national dialogue of reconstruction and reconciliation based on the love that characterizes the Guatemalan brothers, because we expect a government within the foundations of human rights and respect to the different thoughts”.
